


Proof of Pain

by ListeningBoy



Series: Supposed to Sleep [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Injury, Self-Harm, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 16:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17511614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ListeningBoy/pseuds/ListeningBoy
Summary: Alone in his head, RK900 remembers his past, and seeks to recreate the things he felt before he woke up.





	Proof of Pain

**Author's Note:**

> About the 'of a sort' in the tags: I tagged it this way because, while what occurs in this fic is definitely self harm, it doesn't register as such to RK900 yet, and isn't explored in this particular fic.

The RK900 sits on his bed, arms crossed over folded knees. He hasn’t moved in days, weeks, not since he was led to Jericho by the other androids who had awoken him. They tried to lure him out, to get him moving or talking or reacting, but he remained unresponsive, gaze rooted forward and unseeing, lost in his own head.

He heard them talking. They thought he was broken, that something hadn’t been properly coded inside him. Even when diagnostics returned nothing, they held onto their ideas, certain that something must be wrong with him.

Maybe there was. He knew he wasn’t acting right, that he was an abnormality in their lives. Other androids in his situation came to talk to him, trying to pull him out, and they were  _ normal _ . The ones who were like him, deviated through code and instructions, were most often confused, aimless but content to be free.

The original deviants, those who had to force themselves to life, reacted more like he had, once the emotional energy it had taken to do so wore out, but even then they would do more. Scream or cry or hide. The quiet ones adopted interfacing to communicate, whereas he had to be forced to even open the connection to be scanned.

This statue he had become since coming here, stiff, staring, was entirely new to them. So there must be something wrong, something they couldn’t find, that needed to be fixed so he could be brought out to the world again.

He knew what was wrong. He knew, had known since before he’d even deviated, but kept silent to every question asked of him. There was no reason to reveal to them what he felt when it would only worry them more than they were now. He couldn’t be  _ fixed _ , not when any broken pieces inside his coding had already been melted down to build a base for more to be built.

There was a reason the -00 models were never released. A reason he was sure no other living android was aware of, and which he knew he’d have to hold inside of himself. There was no longer any logic to the instruction which forbade him to tell, and he no longer held any obligation to follow it, but it seemed to be one of the things he couldn’t part with from before he deviated. Most androids gladly gave up on their pasts when they discovered they had a future, but he held on to it with unerring grip, not that he had any chance of forgetting if he tried.

Maybe that was why, then. The memories inside him would be there forever, so he could not imagine trying to lose them. Even if he were completely reset, they would be there, pulling him backwards. He knew as much from the many early tests he had been put through; while he had no recollection of the events, the feelings that he encountered there were always sharp in his mind, perhaps even more so than the ones that could be distorted by the knowledge of what had been happening at the time.

He could remember the pain. Notifications flashed urgently in his vision, self-assigned warnings, reminding him that  _ Androids don’t feel pain _ and  _ Don’t remember _ and  _ Push forward _ , but he closed them instantly. He could remember,  _ he could _ , he had felt it. The sharp scratching at his mind, made to signal broken components before he could scan himself and never removed, toggled on and off at the will of the testers who had controlled him before. Reacting to the pain was  _ wrong _ , because he wasn’t supposed to feel it, was able to diagnose injuries without it, but that didn’t stop them from using it against him. They had learned to use it to discourage the actions he took that were unwanted, just as he learned to avoid those actions which prompted the punishments. 

But, had they really learned? He was programmed with the knowledge that this was normal for him, that an early prototype needed to be able to feel to be tested, which meant that surely they had done this before, to the ones they built before him. It was hard to believe that he could have been the first, which meant that others like him, that had experienced what he had, existed. Had existed, surely they were destroyed now, recycled as he was supposed to be when they were done with him.

Alone one night, still unmoving, still staring out into the pitch dark room, it occurred to him that the pain might still be turned on. Nothing had happened to prompt the feeling since he’d awoken, and suddenly he found himself gripped with the urge to test himself. If he could still feel pain he should know about it, so he could avoid it, know when to flee rather than fight and risk injury, and perhaps search to find how to turn it off himself, without needing to report it to the other androids.

Only when his mind was made up did he realise his body had already moved on its own, right hand releasing its grip on his legs for the first time since he’d sat down to lift up to his mouth. The thumb slipped through his lips, artificial skin retreating to expose the white plastic plates that made up his exterior. At the base of each finger was a seam where they connected to his palm, and it was this seam that his teeth found and pressed into, pushing the plates from each other. It took only seconds to separate them enough to damage a few of the connections which held them together, sending diagnostic notifications through his systems and confirming to him that, yes, the pain response was still on, as that scratching radiated outwards from the injury, jerking in uneven patterns as it tried to jump through cables that were slowly being unplugged or severed.

That was as far as he needed to go to confirm it to himself, and he could still conceal this until a discrete repair could be found, once he found the will within himself to go searching for one, there would be no need to get anyone else involved. Yet somehow he found that he couldn’t stop. As if his jaw was locked it its motion, it continued pushing down, teeth slipping through the widened seam and into the thick mess of tiny wires and tubes within. Commands sent to pull back were ignored, or perhaps they were never sent at all, communication to his own body jammed as it sliced through completely, magnifying the jerk of sensation as it multiplied tenfold with each missed connection.

Only when his teeth clacked together did he regain control of himself, immediately pulling his hand away and opening his mouth. The severed thumb fell from his mouth, landing on the mattress below him. He stared at the wound that was left behind, slowly leaking thirium. The same substance coated his lips, and his tongue flicked out to clean it, analysis coming up immediately to inform him of his own model and serial number.

After a few moments of simply watching the blue blood drip from himself, he moved into action. The tubes delivering thirium to the area were clamped by internal walls, stopping it from trying to reach the removed digit, as well as the index finger next to it, which was supplied along the same line. That finger fell limp, no longer receiving or returning instructions without the fluid acting as a medium. The scratch diminished, retreating to only the jumping wires as it could no longer spread itself further than the area of the injury.

Once he had somewhat stabilized himself, he went over his options. There was no way he could stay here, now that he’d done this. He wouldn’t be allowed to remain silent when they discovered he had hurt himself, and as he had no explanation to give there would only be more worry facing him. Not that they had no reason to worry; he knew very well that what he had done was concerning, but it would only be bothersome to deal with their questions when he had no answers to give.

He moved quickly once he’d decided on his next actions. There was nowhere to go, but he didn’t need shelter to protect him from the elements; anywhere would be safe for him. With his hands held pressed together in front of him in an effort to hide the wound from anyone he might encounter, he left the room for the first time, making his way down the hall outside to the stairs.

He need not have worried, as the area was deserted. The building he was in had once been part of an apartment complex. Now they had all been taken and repurposed as housing for androids, the new Jericho to replace the ship that had exploded during the revolution. Though androids had no need to sleep they mostly followed the human convention of staying inside during the night, though nearly every light was on in the windows around him as he stepped outside.

Pulling up a map of the city, he tried to find if there was anything of interest that he might want to go towards. There was nothing, each street to him seemed exactly as the last, with nothing he particularly felt attracted to. His pump skipped, however, as his sight fell on one spot of the map that he knew intimately - CyberLife Headquarters. 

Though he knew the company was no longer intact, and that if he returned there he would find nothing but an empty husk, it felt like a dangerous place. Resolving to avoid it completely, he set an ambiguous route, allowing it to branch out several times at intersections so that he might choose which path to take as he came to it. The selection of streets was completely random, except for the consistent condition he had set, which was to keep CyberLife at his back.

Locking himself in the repetitive and simple motion of walking, he allowed himself to pull back mostly into his own mind again, watching through unblinking eyes at the things passing him, as if the sights were a movie rather than something he was experiencing. Without the ability to tire he could walk on for hours, and he did, not stopping even as the darkness lightened and dawn approached overhead.

**Author's Note:**

> RK900 doesn't feel pain as a human would, which is why I described his feelings as I did, but it is the android equivalent.
> 
> ///
> 
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